Nigeria Content Online

The Austrian-Jewish
novelist and playwright Stefan Zweig once famously described Brazil,
his adopted home, as “the land of the future” — a country of eternal
potential. Today, Brazil is an increasingly self-confident emergent
world economic power, a technological-industrial state of the first
rank, thanks to visionary leaders such as Fernando Henrique Cardoso and
Luis Iñacio Lula da Sliva, who have turned around the fortunes of the
country.

Nigeria,
unfortunately, seems to have inherited the questionable mantle of being
Stefan Zweig’s land of the future – a country forever in suspended
animation.

Last week, during
Monday the 13th and Tuesday the 14th, a conference was held under the
Abuja Distinguished Speaker Series (ADSS) on the theme of “Unlocking
Nigeria’s Wealth Potentials”. The ADSS is a joint initiative of the
Abuja Investment Company Ltd (AICL), the commercial and investment
agency of the Federal Capital Territory and the Centre for Policy and
Economic Research (CEPER), an Abuja-based macroeconomics and public
policy think tank founded by yours sincerely. The aim of the series is
to bring to our Federal Capital world leaders in business, government
and academia to speak on issues of national and international
importance. It is part of efforts to place Africa’s most beautiful
capital on the map in terms of cutting-edge ideas that would help
transform our country.

Last week saw the
launching of the maiden lecture by Professor Peter Lewis, Director of
the African Studies Programme at the elite Johns Hopkins School of
Advanced International Studies in Washington, DC. The welcome address
was given by the Minister for the Federal Capital Territory, the gentle
and soft-spoken Bala Abdulkadir Mohammed. The event was declared open
by the President of the Senate, David Mark. A brief introduction was
made by the Managing Director of AICL, Abdu Mukhtar, a Harvard Medical
School graduate who has become a successful finance and investment
executive. Participants were drawn from industry, finance, government
and the international agencies. Among the speakers were: Bart Nnaji,
Special Adviser to the President on Power; Andrew Alli, CEO of the
African Finance Corporation; Mustapha Bello, Director-General of the
Nigerian Investment Corporation (NIPC); Ernest Ndukwe, former Executive
Vice-Chairman of the National Communications Commission; Ikenna Nwosu,
CEO of Mooregate Ltd; Ndidi Nnoli-Edozien, Founder and CEO of the
Growing Business Foundation of Nigeria; Isa Odidi, founder/CEO of
IntelliPharmaceutics Ltd, a billion dollar publicly quoted firm based
in Toronto, Canada; Hassan Usman, CEO of Aso Savings Ltd; and my humble
self.

Peter Lewis provided the main lecture around which three round tables were organised.

His paper, titled
“Can Nigeria transform its Economy? Lessons from Asia” drew from his
famous book, Growing Apart: Oil, Politics and Economic Change in
Indonesia and Nigeria (Michigan University Press, 2007). It is one of
the most important books to be written on comparative Nigerian
development over the last two decades and I recommend it to all those
who feel a calling to leadership in this country.

Lewis makes the
point that Nigeria and Indonesia started in the 1960s with similar
initial conditions but ended up with development trajectories. Both are
large, populous oil producers; both are ethnically divided societies;
both underwent bloody civil conflicts as well as corrupt military
tyrannies. But that is where the similarities end. Unlike Nigeria, the
Indonesian power elites managed to broker a national development
consensus that oversaw massive investments in infrastructures and human
capital. Indonesia pursued an agriculture-led, export-oriented
industrialisation strategy that has seen the country reduce its
dependence on oil as principal source of government revenues. Most
importantly, Indonesian elites kept their ill-gotten wealth within the
country. They invested at home, providing jobs and opportunities for
their own people.

We did the complete
opposite. Out of the US$850 billion we have made from petroleum over
the last four decades, between US$200 and US$400 billion have been
squirreled abroad. Our physical infrastructures, including power, are
in shambolic conditions and our education system is fourth-world. The
tragedy of our situation is that most of us do not believe in our
country. This encourages the haemorrhaging of the economy through
capital flight which in turn deepens the vicious cycle of poverty. If
people decide to take everything abroad the country will remain poor
and our people will continue to wallow in destitution.

What is the ultimate solution?

For my part, I
believe part of it lies in the declaration of an amnesty on all
expatriated funds for two years, after which the government should be
free to prosecute those who have pillaged our national treasure.

That could rake in
an estimated 25 trillion naira, which is more than what we need to
realise our much-vaunted ambition of being among the top 20 economies
by the coming decade. We must also create conditions that make it
attractive to invest at home. I regard Indonesia as one of the ‘softer’
Asian countries. We have to benchmark ourselves against China, Japan and South Korea.

History teaches that nations can never rise above the vision and
endowment of their leaders and the heights of their ambitions. I have
never wavered in my faith about our country’s high and noble destiny.
If we do not believe in ourselves nobody will believe in us.

Election violence
has become part of the mix in African countries – something to be jaded
about; no longer breaking news. We fight over power – we kill and maim
the innocent; it’s become part of the problems that ail us and threaten
to swallow us.

So, it must be
that the hands behind the nefarious Kenyan post-election violence in
2008 assumed that it was business as usual, and no one would be held
accountable for the atrocities. There was, after all, serious violence
at the 1992 and the 1997 elections, and the continued fact of electoral
violence has been blamed on what some activists have called “a culture
of impunity”. Indeed, many African countries can identify with this
culture of impunity, a common thread many of them share.

In Kenya’s 2008
case, following the disputed election results of December 2007,
protests began all over the country, powered by militias and a power
drunk police force.

According to the
ICC’s Chief Prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, “victims were hurt. They
were raped, their homes burnt and they lost their cattle, they lost all
means to support themselves. We are siding with them. We will do
justice.”

Last week, the
chickens began to come home to roost. International Criminal Court
investigators are ready to pinpoint suspects that they claim are behind
the violence. Many of course have warned that, in that polarized
country where the coalition government is barely surviving chaos and
different factions are in constant battle mode, naming political
perpetrators might lead to an increase in tension and violence. But
then the law is the law, actions must have consequences and
accountability is necessary to build a just society.

This probe – that
has become popular across the country – began in March of this year to
investigate the death of more than 1000 and the displacement of tens of
thousands, undermining the image of Kenya as one of the better examples
of how governance can work in the continent and the fact that
governance in the continent can be run on stability.

Surely, it is more
important to work to ensure that kind of violence doesn’t occur again
than to massage the fragile egos of politicians who care less about the
long term existence of the country than on the short term weight of
their pockets. Citizens of any country deserve to be protected by the
state and live in the assurance that measures will always be constantly
taken to preserve their lives and sustenance.

That is what is
happening in Kenya now – or has begun to happen. Either way it is a
huge step, and we join many across the continent in applauding it. The
suspects to be named are expected to be from the two main political
factions in the country, and many of its ‘big men’ including business
chiefs and public officials, and if this is the case, even better to
send a strong message to politicians and their acolytes alike that
lives are infinitely more important than power.

The prosecutor in
this case seems determined to pursue all legal and popular methods to
ensure that justice is brought to the victims of this violence and this
never happens again. To prove its effectiveness, many politicians in
that country have begun to run scared, trying to stave off what seems
like the inevitable. Even better, there seems to be a plan to have
local trials complement the efforts on the ICC. In a country where,
like Nigeria, high level criminals are routinely let off the hook, this
is a ray of hope for the common man.

It is also a ray
of hope for the many average Africans oppressed by their own leaders
and seemingly powerless to set things right.

Perhaps Kenya can become the shining light for a continent desperately in need of a road map out of its darkness.

Since Wednesday the
15th of December, the government and people of Ghana have been thrown
into celebrations as they join the global league of oil producing
countries. Ghanaian President John Atta Mills, opened the valve at the
Jubilee field where oil was discovered in commercial quantity in 2007.
The field has about 500 million barrels proven reserves and a potential
of over a billion barrels. The first phase of the production has begun
with about 55,000 barrels per day with a potential increase of 120, 000
barrels in January 2011.

The jubilee
partners include Tullow Oil plc (37.7 percent), Anadarko Petroleum Corp
(23.49 percent) Kosmos Energy (23.49 percent), and Ghana National
Petroleum Corporation (GNPC) (13.75 percent) Sabre Oil and Gas (2.81
percent) and E.O. Group (1.75 percent). Oil production has a potential
of supplying 400 million dollars worth of revenue to Ghana’s 2011budget
and one billion dollars annual income in subsequent years. However
there is widespread fear that events may go the way they have gone in
many other oil rich African countries especially neighbouring Nigeria.

Although it has
been more than three years since oil was discovered in Ghana, there is
still no legislation to regulate the sector. The Ghana Petroleum and
Exploration Bill 2010 is still being debated in the parliament. As the
valve opens for oil to flow, Ghana may depend on an ad hoc regulatory
architecture until the Bill is passed into law. As a country with no
oil production experience, Ghana will need to build up a brand new
bureaucracy and man power for the sector to take off. With an apparent
lack of indigenous man power, an option may be to import personnel from
neighbouring Nigeria while an aggressive man power development
programme is launched. Many civil society activists believe that a
particular clause in the Bill that seeks to prevent government from
securing oil backed loans has been excised. Speculations are therefore
rife that these gaps will provide opportunities for multinational oil
companies who are in partnership with the Ghanaian National oil company
to have a field day. In many African countries like Nigeria and Angola,
this is the case. Multinational oil companies have ripped of many host
governments because they lack the requisite capacity to negotiate
favourable agreements. What has therefore happened is that the
agreements entered into mostly turn out to be unusually skewed in the
favour of these companies. The so called natural resource curse is
therefore something Ghanaians must watch out for. Former Venezuelan oil
minister and cofounder of Oil Producing and Exporting Countries (OPEC),
Joan Pablo Perez Alfonzo, once predicted that oil was the devil’s
excrement that will only bring ruin to countries where it is found.

He was referring to
a situation where many countries that are rich with natural resources
have not managed to get their development right. Such countries depend
on oil exports and overtime become economically troubled, often
becoming authoritarian and conflict ridden. A very important symptom of
the resource curse is increased appetite for spending due to the oil
boom.

A former Nigerian
military Head of State, Yakubu Gowon, was quoted as saying on the
national television during the oil boom of the 1970s that “fellow
Nigerians our problem is no longer money but how to spend it”. There is
also the case of volatility of oil prices and fiscal indiscipline which
hampers growth and poverty alleviation. The flow of petrodollars
replaces more stable and sustainable revenue streams exacerbating
patronage and encouraging development as well as accountability
deficits. The situation makes it difficult for local manufacturers to
compete while incentives become distorted. The Ghanaian economy has
shown very commendable positive growth signs recently and must strive
not to allow her growth trajectory to be distorted by the flow of
petrodollars.

One of the greatest
weaknesses of the Africa’s extractive industry is the lack of a strong
regulatory environment. This is sometimes due to capacity weakness or
corruption. Ghana has an opportunity to insist on a regulatory
environment that equates international best practice. Ghana National
Petroleum Corporation must strive to be everything that Nigerian
National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) is not. A recent study the
program on Energy and Environment at Stanford University describes NNPC
as “neither a real commercial entity or a meaningful oil operator. It
functions as an instrument of patronage. Each transaction generated by
its profuse bureaucracy provides an opportunity for well connected
individuals that act as gate keepers whose approval must be secured in
contracting processes. It ties oil operations to massive red tape which
increases cost and uncertainties (corruption) and deters investment”.

Multinational oil
companies are the biggest beneficiaries of these shady practices as
they implement their ‘famous’ double standards. While they are happy to
enforce high standards in their home country, they insist on an
entirely porous standards in host countries in Africa in active
connivance with government officials. Ghana must be vigilant to enter
into business deals that can better the lot of her people.

Most importantly
Ghana needs to look at the human poverty, infra structural deficit and
ecological catastrophe in the Niger Delta region to wake up from their
slumber and thread with care!

Uche Igwe, Africa Policy Scholar at Woodrow Wilson Centre sent this piece from Washington DC, USA

It was only a few
weeks ago that I wrote about an experience which I had in Abuja
regarding the attitude of Nigeria’s older generation towards the up and
coming generation. I have also written about our culture of
‘gerontocracy’, the attitude of making the younger ones take a back
seat regardless of how many goofs are made by the elders.

Last Sunday, I was
at a friend’s place when we were introduced to a young man whom I am
very impressed with. His name is Tolulope Iruoye. Mr. Iruoye is twenty
seven, but has already achieved a lot. The problem is that he has not
exactly been recognised by his country, more importantly, his good work
has not received the attention it deserves, and as a result has not
started to touch the lives it is capable of touching.

Mr. Iruoye took an
early interest in knowing how things work and naturally gravitated
towards engineering. He says that he loved viewing pictures of
electrical designs from about age six. By the time he was six (when my
three-year older self was climbing trees), Tolu had built his first
batteries, and by ten (when young Chxta was being heart-broken for the
first time), Tolu was already repairing electrical devices. Two years
later, he had built a mini-radio transmitter. Six years down the line
at age eighteen, self-trained Tolu designed and built an inverter.

Over the years, he
has designed and constructed many different devices such as voltage
stabilizers, inverters, home security systems, solar power systems, and
a whole lot more. The device which impressed me the most is what he
calls ‘Magic Box’ which gives the user access to his electrical systems
from anywhere in the world using a mobile phone. This device was tested
in our presence when someone from London made a call to turn on a
device in front of our very eyes. He has clients in Lagos, Benin and
even in neighbouring Cotonou, Benin Republic.

However, I am of
the opinion that Tolu’s capacity is nowhere near being realised. For
crying out loud, the boy lugs a rucksack around to show his devices.
This in an economy where power is still a serious issue.

What Tolu needs is
money to achieve his potential. How does he raise that money? Does he
go to a bank? Nigeria’s banks are not lending at the moment, and even
if they were, the interest rates would be such that Tolu would
essentially be working for them, and would not achieve much. I have
seen too many good business ideas crumble under the unrealistic burdens
imposed by Nigerian banks. So how does he get the money?

In 2004 a young
Harvard student started a web site and moved from Boston to California.
He met with some people who liked his idea, believed it could work, and
invested $500 000 into it. Now the young man is the world’s youngest
billionaire, and the people who gave him money have reaped their
investment many times over. That story leads to the question where are
the people in Nigeria who have money? Why can they not invest in
bright, young minds like Tolu who would not only give them an excellent
return on their investment, but also ease the burden on Nigeria by
providing employment for a lot of other young Nigerians?

We need venture capitalists in Nigeria, unfortunately, our older generation refuses to think out of the box.

For those of us who
found Jesus in a crib, not in Bethlehem of Judea, but in the goat shade
in our remote African villages, celebrating Christmas meant a change in
the normal course of our daily lives. The birth of Jesus meant that
something different would happen in the family diet as well as in the
ways we normally costumed ourselves.

There was no real Christmas if
there was no rice to be eaten in a way it was not eaten in our normal
daily dieting. Christmas was, for us, rice and more rice and more rice!
And of course there was no Christmas rice if there was no animal to
kill and bleed, at least a fowl. There was no proper Christmas if there
were no set of new clothes and shoes to put on.

How could anyone
approach Mary’s Boy-child in his crib with old clothes on? Christmas
meant the newness we had never known, a newness of the old story. But
it also particularly meant some special noise in the neighbourhood: the
noise of cooking and eating; the noise of the arrival of the people of
the city; the noises of fireworks, locally made from matches and
carbide or wrapped-up explosives brought by the people from the city;
the noises of some new masquerade or group dance, and of some
house-to-house carolling and carousing; the noises of noises in our
feasting hearts, et cetera.

Christmas, the
perspective of the village, still is the time for the city to remember
what it has almost forgotten. The people of the city will visit the
village and add to the warmth and noise in the air. City things make
Christmas in the village glow and so every family looks forward to the
return of its ambassadors from the city.

Perhaps this is one
thing that Igbo ethnic persons in Nigeria are now known for: every
Christmas and New Year, they must return to their villages to make
their homesteads warm and sufficiently noisy. None wants to deny their
family the joy of the noise of that reunion.

There are family
meetings to be held, disputes to be settled, relationships to be
serviced. There are community projects to launch and funds to be
raised. It is a time to make the village begin to happen again as a
“community” and those who fail to return without any good reason are
seen as people who have chosen to be “outside” the community, in fact
some thoughts away from self-ostracism! Christ is born in Bethlehem, a
choir sings. But, hold it there! Bethlehem is no other place than my
village in Anambra State, Nigeria. If you say that is a lie, then you
would be the one to pay the
ten-ten-thousand-Naira-plus-five-cartons-of-beer fine that the
Development Union of my village has slammed upon any member not found
in the village this Christmas for the launch of a new project. Yes,
“TEN-TEN thousand Naira” fine plus-or-minus the usual gragra from the
Union’s Executive and harassment by the Provost, the official police
officer of the Union.

That Bethlehem is
my village and my village is Bethlehem where three-times-three wise men
from Eastern Nigeria must go also means that other parts of Nigeria
where they live and do their businesses would become empty during
Christmas. I am not sure their hosts in these parts of the country like
it. The shops would be locked up for at least two weeks and it would be
difficult to see where to buy what one needs or to get a service one
requires. I am not sure the pastors in the churches they attend in
these other parts of the country like it either, for it means that the
offertory tray would be starved throughout this very “fertile” period.
Ah well, the churches in the villages rejoice and thank God that, as
the Igbo say, the termite has eventually fallen for the toad after
flying about.

It is also some
good business for the people of the road: commercial vehicle operators,
touts, fast food vendors, beggars, emergency motor mechanics, the
police, (ah, yes, the POLICE!), the customs officials, vehicle
inspection officers, and other uniformed and non-uniformed problem
people on Nigerian roads. The people of the road look forward to the
celebration of the birth of Christ for an improvement in their income.
Christmas, for them, means more noise in their pockets or that the
new-born king has redistributed wealth, so that someone has to pay
extra for looking for a noisy celebration in another location on the
Nigerian map. Their Christmas has to be noisier than someone else’s
too, after all, the Star that is leading the three-times-three wise men
to where Jesus lies in the crib in the village also has to drop its
light on the affairs of other social actors.

Yes, my Christmas is noisier than yours because I am one of the
three-times-three wise men whose journey, too, is a cause for
celebration, even when it creates some emptiness here and some
congestion there!

It is evident that
African women are the backbone of national economies. From the
grassroots to national level, the womenfolk are involved in all spheres
of development. Apart from performing all domestic chores, many of them
also farm and trade. They are also responsible for taking care of the
children, the sick and the elderly, in addition to performing essential
social functions within their communities. About half of our
economically active female labour force is employed in agriculture and
their responsibilities and labour inputs sometimes exceed those of the
men. All these efforts are mainly geared towards the survival of the
children.

In fact, many
people who today are benefiting from the fruits of education have their
mothers to thank for it. The women are also increasingly getting
recognised due to their energetic efforts to organise, articulate their
concerns and make their voices heard. At both grassroots and national
levels, more women associations have been formed. They have taken
advantage of the political openings to assert their leadership and
developmental roles. They are also pressing for an expansion of women’s
economic and social opportunities, and the advancement of women’s
rights. By improving their own positions, they are simultaneously
strengthening society as a whole, as well as enhancing the nation’s
broader development prospects.

The deputy
minister of Agriculture was indeed right in observing that African
women produce 80 percent of the continent’s basic food.

His observation
shows that state technocrats are increasingly recognising the roles of
women at the grassroots level for eventual full integration in national
development programmes.

However, despite
the huge contributions of women in the development of Africa, in some
parts of the continent their contributions have not translated into
significantly improved access to resources or increased decision-making
powers. Neither has the dynamism that women display in the economic,
cultural and social lives of their communities through their
associations and informal networks been channelled into creating new
models of participation and leadership.

A comprehensive
approach must be taken by governments in conjunction with development
agencies and women themselves to remove the social, economic and legal
constraints on women. Regional actions are also needed for implementing
the African Common Position for the Advancement of Women and the
Platform of Action adopted in Beijing. And national action plans must
be designed in broad consultation with women’s groups to complement
regional initiatives.

The advancement of
the welfare of African women should be the primary objective of all
countries.

Courtesy Daily Observer, The Gambia

Jimmy Carter is putting the out in outspokenness.

In an interview with bigthink.com, the former president was asked, “Is the country ready for a gay president?”

Even as John McCain
and other ossified Republicans were staging last-minute manoeuvres to
torpedo the “don’t ask, don’t tell” repeal, the 86-year-old Carter was
envisioning a grander civil rights victory.

“I would say that the answer is yes,” he said. “I don’t know about the next election, but I think in the near future.”

The news that
Leonardo DiCaprio and Armie Hammer will smooch in an upcoming movie
about J. Edgar Hoover and his aide Clyde Tolson – buried near each
other in the Congressional Cemetery on Capitol Hill – is a reminder of
an “Advise and Consent” Washington where being a closeted gay official
made you vulnerable to blackmail.

Others feel we’re
not ready for a gay president, citing the fear and loathing unleashed
by the election of the first black president. “Can you imagine how much
a gay president would have to overcompensate to please the macho
ninnies who control our national debate?” Bill Maher told me. “Women
like Hillary have to do it, Obama had to do it because he’s black and
liberal, but a gay president? He’d have to nuke something the first
week.”

I called Barney
Frank, assuming the gay pioneer would be optimistic. He wasn’t. “It’s
one thing to have a gay person in the abstract,” he said. “It’s another
to see that person as part of a living, breathing couple. How would a
gay presidential candidate have a celebratory kiss with his partner
after winning the New Hampshire primary? The sight of two women kissing
has not been as distressful to people as the sight of two men kissing.”
Because of the Defence of Marriage Act, he added, “it’s not clear that
a gay president could use federal funds to buy his husband dinner.

Would his partner have to pay rent in the White House? There would be no Secret Service protection for the paramour.”

Frank noted that
we’ve “clearly had one gay president already, James Buchanan. If I had
to pick one, it wouldn’t be him.” (The Atlantic blogger Andrew Sullivan
aims higher, citing Abe Lincoln, who sometimes bundled with his
military bodyguard in bed when his wife was away.)

Frank said that
although most Republicans now acknowledge that sexual orientation is
not a choice, they still can’t handle their pols’ coming out. “There
are Republicans here who are gay,” he said of Congress, “but as long as
they don’t acknowledge it, it’s O.K. Republicans only tolerate you
being gay as long as you don’t seem proud of it. You’ve got to be
apologetic.”

Sam Adams, the
mayor of Portland, Ore., hopes that the repeal of “don’t ask, don’t
tell” will help persuade “the collective conscience of the United
States that gay people are just the same as anybody else. We shouldn’t
have to die in the closet. The irony is, as mayor, I marry people, but
I can’t marry Peter, my long time partner.”

There are no openly
gay senators, governors, cabinet members or Supreme Court justices.
There are four openly gay Democratic House members, once David
Cicilline of Rhode Island gets sworn in.

Representative
Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin recalled that during a race for State
Assembly, a voter she thought was “trouble” swaggered up to her. But
she need not have braced herself. “If you can be honest about that,” he
told her, “you’ll be honest about everything.”

She said she took
her former girlfriend, Lauren, to White House parties to meet three
presidents, interactions that she thinks “really helps change minds and
advance the cause.”

Representative
Jared Polis of Colorado said he took his boyfriend, Marlon Reis, to a
White House Christmas party this year. He said Marlon is “very popular
– some of his best friends are Republican spouses.”

Fred Sainz of the Human Rights Campaign fretted to his husband that a gay president would be anticlimactic.

“People expect this
bizarre and outlandish behaviour,” he told me. “We’re always the funny
neighbour wearing colourful, avant-garde clothing. We would let down
people with our boringness and banality when they learn that we go to
grocery stores Saturday afternoon, take our kids to school plays and go
see movies.”

After studying
polling data for a decade, Sainz thinks a lesbian would have a better
shot at the presidency than a gay man. “People are more comfortable
with women than they are with men because of stereotypes with gay men
about hyper sexuality,” he said.

André Leon Talley,
the Vogue visionary, pictures a lesbian president who looks like Julie
Andrews and dresses to meet heads of state in “ankle-length skirts,
grazing the Manolo Blahnik kitten heels.” She would save her “butch
trouser suit for weekends at Camp David and vacation hikes in
Yellowstone. No plaid lumberjack shirts at any time.”

2010 New York Times News Service

The Austrian-Jewish
novelist and playwright Stefan Zweig once famously described Brazil,
his adopted home, as “the land of the future” — a country of eternal
potential. Today, Brazil is an increasingly self-confident emergent
world economic power, a technological-industrial state of the first
rank, thanks to visionary leaders such as Fernando Henrique Cardoso and
Luis Iñacio Lula da Sliva, who have turned around the fortunes of the
country.

Nigeria,
unfortunately, seems to have inherited the questionable mantle of being
Stefan Zweig’s land of the future – a country forever in suspended
animation.

Last week, during
Monday the 13th and Tuesday the 14th, a conference was held under the
Abuja Distinguished Speaker Series (ADSS) on the theme of “Unlocking
Nigeria’s Wealth Potentials”. The ADSS is a joint initiative of the
Abuja Investment Company Ltd (AICL), the commercial and investment
agency of the Federal Capital Territory and the Centre for Policy and
Economic Research (CEPER), an Abuja-based macroeconomics and public
policy think tank founded by yours sincerely. The aim of the series is
to bring to our Federal Capital world leaders in business, government
and academia to speak on issues of national and international
importance. It is part of efforts to place Africa’s most beautiful
capital on the map in terms of cutting-edge ideas that would help
transform our country.

Last week saw the
launching of the maiden lecture by Professor Peter Lewis, Director of
the African Studies Programme at the elite Johns Hopkins School of
Advanced International Studies in Washington, DC. The welcome address
was given by the Minister for the Federal Capital Territory, the gentle
and soft-spoken Bala Abdulkadir Mohammed. The event was declared open
by the President of the Senate, David Mark. A brief introduction was
made by the Managing Director of AICL, Abdu Mukhtar, a Harvard Medical
School graduate who has become a successful finance and investment
executive. Participants were drawn from industry, finance, government
and the international agencies. Among the speakers were: Bart Nnaji,
Special Adviser to the President on Power; Andrew Alli, CEO of the
African Finance Corporation; Mustapha Bello, Director-General of the
Nigerian Investment Corporation (NIPC); Ernest Ndukwe, former Executive
Vice-Chairman of the National Communications Commission; Ikenna Nwosu,
CEO of Mooregate Ltd; Ndidi Nnoli-Edozien, Founder and CEO of the
Growing Business Foundation of Nigeria; Isa Odidi, founder/CEO of
IntelliPharmaceutics Ltd, a billion dollar publicly quoted firm based
in Toronto, Canada; Hassan Usman, CEO of Aso Savings Ltd; and my humble
self.

Peter Lewis provided the main lecture around which three round tables were organised.

His paper, titled
“Can Nigeria transform its Economy? Lessons from Asia” drew from his
famous book, Growing Apart: Oil, Politics and Economic Change in
Indonesia and Nigeria (Michigan University Press, 2007). It is one of
the most important books to be written on comparative Nigerian
development over the last two decades and I recommend it to all those
who feel a calling to leadership in this country.

Lewis makes the
point that Nigeria and Indonesia started in the 1960s with similar
initial conditions but ended up with development trajectories. Both are
large, populous oil producers; both are ethnically divided societies;
both underwent bloody civil conflicts as well as corrupt military
tyrannies. But that is where the similarities end. Unlike Nigeria, the
Indonesian power elites managed to broker a national development
consensus that oversaw massive investments in infrastructures and human
capital. Indonesia pursued an agriculture-led, export-oriented
industrialisation strategy that has seen the country reduce its
dependence on oil as principal source of government revenues. Most
importantly, Indonesian elites kept their ill-gotten wealth within the
country. They invested at home, providing jobs and opportunities for
their own people.

We did the complete
opposite. Out of the US$850 billion we have made from petroleum over
the last four decades, between US$200 and US$400 billion have been
squirreled abroad. Our physical infrastructures, including power, are
in shambolic conditions and our education system is fourth-world. The
tragedy of our situation is that most of us do not believe in our
country. This encourages the haemorrhaging of the economy through
capital flight which in turn deepens the vicious cycle of poverty. If
people decide to take everything abroad the country will remain poor
and our people will continue to wallow in destitution.

What is the ultimate solution?

For my part, I
believe part of it lies in the declaration of an amnesty on all
expatriated funds for two years, after which the government should be
free to prosecute those who have pillaged our national treasure.

That could rake in
an estimated 25 trillion naira, which is more than what we need to
realise our much-vaunted ambition of being among the top 20 economies
by the coming decade. We must also create conditions that make it
attractive to invest at home. I regard Indonesia as one of the ‘softer’
Asian countries. We have to benchmark ourselves against China, Japan and South Korea.

History teaches that nations can never rise above the vision and
endowment of their leaders and the heights of their ambitions. I have
never wavered in my faith about our country’s high and noble destiny.
If we do not believe in ourselves nobody will believe in us.

Last Wednesday, a former Vice President of Nigeria and presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Atiku Abubakar made what might well be the defining speech of the campaign by an ill-tempered calls to arms, apparently if he did not win the PDP primaries ticket. In a statement said to have lasted no more than five minutes, Atiku managed to lay bare a lot of what is wrong with the politics of the country and some of those practising it. In an address to his supporters from across the country at an event in Abuja, with the alluring title of: ‘Building a national consensus for national unity,’ Atiku Abubakar warned that a violent change might be inevitable in the country if the present crops of leaders fail to encourage peaceful change.

‘‘Let me again send another message to the leadership of our country, especially our political leadership – those who make peaceful change impossible, make violent change inevitable.,” Mr. Abubakar said, add-ing, almost as an after-thought, that ‘‘But this is not what we want for our country.”

This is a speech that would do a university student trying to impress his teen colleagues proud. But it is hardly appropriate for a national figure of Mr Abubakar’s calibre. It is also particularly damaging when this statement is coming at a crucial stage when political parties are gearing up for their national primaries, one in which Mr. Abubakar is participating.

Cut it any which way, and it is not hard to surmise that the statement is directed at the man who is Mr. Abubakar’s main opponent for the presidential ticket of the PDP, President Goodluck Jonathan. Mr Abubakar and his supporters have long sought to deny legitimacy to the goal of Mr. Jonathan to contest the presidential ticket on the dubious premise that the part of the country he came from cannot produce a presidential candidate for next year’s election. In fact, the fulcrum of Mr. Abubakar’s candidacy has been based on the notion of his being a candidate of a section of the country which he says should be the one to produce the next president of the country.

But that is fair; after all what is politics if not a game where people try to maximize their perceived strengths to win political office. What should not be acceptable are people making petulant calls for a breakdown of the system on their perception that it might not be favourable to them. Which raises the pertinent question regarding Mr. Abubakar’s call to arms: who particularly is making change impossible and what particular change does Mr Abubakar want? And how in the name of all that is good can this life-long politician believe that violence would bring about the kind of change that is good for himself or the country?

To all intents and purpose, the race for next year’s election is on. It is even safe to assume that the electoral programme has not been this good for some time in the past. INEC has a respectable leadership that appears determined to curb the excesses of the past; the political parties are working on their programmes and candidates have taken to the air to sell their virtue to the electorate. The system has been able to check excesses by some political players, including a power grabbing attempt by lawmakers. No one has proclaimed any law stopping anyone from contesting – except if you count the attempt to stop Jonathan – and the race appears open in several instances. It is possible that Mr. Abubakar was clumsily trying to head off attempts to rig the primaries and or the general election. But even that would appear rash.

Until the result of the primaries and the general election is out, no one could really plead that the system did not work. In any case, it is debatable if a resort to violence would be the best response even if there was fraud in the process. As Mr. Abubakar should have learnt from his former associates in the Action Congress of Nigeria, the legal system is actually quite capable of correcting electoral theft.

Although Mr. Abubakar left the party for the PDP before the court ruled on electoral cases in Edo, Ekiti and Osun states, the Action Congress (and Labour Party in Ondo and APGA in Anambra State) has shown that politicians need not waste the lives of others before they get restitution for wrong declaration of results. It will be good if he and other politicians would take the moral of this court judgment to heart. Like in any other race, only one person can win a political contest and the default by politicians to claim they were robbed of victory is a bane of the growth of democracy in weak democracies. It would help all of us if politicians real-ised that it is possible to come short in a race and that does not necessarily mean the end of the world.